The makers of a rightwing anti-President Obama documentary which became a surprise box office hit prior to last year's US presidential elections are to release a follow-up, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza, whose film 2016: Obama's America swiftly became the second highest-grossing political documentary of all time, despite opening in a single US cinema screen with a budget of $2.5m, will release a new documentary called America prior to next year's mid-term elections in the US. The film was formally announced at the Conservative political action conference in Washington DC on 16 March. D'Souza will write and appear on camera, while 2016 co-director John Sullivan will take the director's chair.

America will allege that Obama sees his country as an "aggressive force", while in reality it is a force for good in the world. D'Souza says he will liken the nation to the classic 1946 Frank Capra's film It's a Wonderful Life, in which James Stewart's melancholy George Bailey discovers what his town would have been like had he never lived. America (the film) will imagine what the world might have been like had the US never existed.

"President Obama looks at America as an oppressive force," D'Souza contended, "while I and millions of others around the world have a different view – that America has been a great blessing to its own people and to the world." He added: "We intend to provide both serious answers and have some fun as we take Obama's dreams for America to their logical conclusions."

2016: Obama's America eventually pulled in $33.5m (£22.1m), behind only Michael Moore's anti-George W Bush polemic Fahrenheit 9/11 (with $222m [£146.8m]) in the pantheon of US political documentaries. D'Souza's film argued that the president's political instincts were anti-American – allegedly due to the influence of his supposedly anti-colonialist Kenyan father, Barack Obama Sr. It warned that a second term for the younger Obama would likely change the country permanently.

2016 was based on D'Souza's book The Roots of Obama's Rage. It is not clear whether the author will produce an accompanying tome for his latest documentary venture.